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- Mar 6, 2017
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Part 4
Ask why the Palestinian case has been taken up with such zest by our universities and the answer will be partly economic — almost as many Muslims pay to study at British universities as there are Jews in the entire population of the United Kingdom — and partly ideological.
It should matter to all of us, and not just Jews, that our tertiary institutions have grown so obsessed with 'colonisers' and the 'colonised' that empire has become the template against which almost every historical event is measured.
As evidenced by Jeremy Corbyn's monosyllabic remarks about Zionism, one needs to know nothing about history to be sure that the founding of Israel was a colonial enterprise.
Question that and you will be accused, as happened to Jewish students at the University of Bristol recently, of being in the pay of the Israeli government.
In fact, nothing could be more laughable than the idea that the first desperate Jews who came limping from the pogroms of Europe, after the Balfour Declaration of 1917 gave its support for 'a national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine, were colonisers or empire builders. Jews had been returning to their homeland for centuries, looking for nothing but a place of peace, spiritual renewal and safety.
Yes, things changed in the succeeding years, but Palestinian intransigence in the matter of sharing the country played a part in hardening Israel's resolve.
This, however, you will not be taught in whichever course preaching the evils of white supremacy you enrol.
And so — despite the academic cheers for Hamas — the bombs fall on Gaza and our hearts break. Is it anti-Semitic to wish Israel could find some other, more subtle and humane way of destroying Hamas?
No. But it is anti-Semitic to rush to false judgments about Israel's actions and intentions, to blame them for what they do not do and to refuse to understand the existential fears that drive their actions. And it most decidedly is anti-Semitic to say: 'There you are — didn't we tell you that Jews love killing babies.'
This might be the most diabolic anti-Semitic trick of all — reactivating the blood libel that has killed millions of Jews so far, and still counting.
www.dailymail.co.uk
Ask why the Palestinian case has been taken up with such zest by our universities and the answer will be partly economic — almost as many Muslims pay to study at British universities as there are Jews in the entire population of the United Kingdom — and partly ideological.
It should matter to all of us, and not just Jews, that our tertiary institutions have grown so obsessed with 'colonisers' and the 'colonised' that empire has become the template against which almost every historical event is measured.
As evidenced by Jeremy Corbyn's monosyllabic remarks about Zionism, one needs to know nothing about history to be sure that the founding of Israel was a colonial enterprise.
Question that and you will be accused, as happened to Jewish students at the University of Bristol recently, of being in the pay of the Israeli government.
In fact, nothing could be more laughable than the idea that the first desperate Jews who came limping from the pogroms of Europe, after the Balfour Declaration of 1917 gave its support for 'a national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine, were colonisers or empire builders. Jews had been returning to their homeland for centuries, looking for nothing but a place of peace, spiritual renewal and safety.
Yes, things changed in the succeeding years, but Palestinian intransigence in the matter of sharing the country played a part in hardening Israel's resolve.
This, however, you will not be taught in whichever course preaching the evils of white supremacy you enrol.
And so — despite the academic cheers for Hamas — the bombs fall on Gaza and our hearts break. Is it anti-Semitic to wish Israel could find some other, more subtle and humane way of destroying Hamas?
No. But it is anti-Semitic to rush to false judgments about Israel's actions and intentions, to blame them for what they do not do and to refuse to understand the existential fears that drive their actions. And it most decidedly is anti-Semitic to say: 'There you are — didn't we tell you that Jews love killing babies.'
This might be the most diabolic anti-Semitic trick of all — reactivating the blood libel that has killed millions of Jews so far, and still counting.
Howard Jacobson offers scalding critique on anti-semitism
HOWARD JACOBSON: Sometimes it's the smaller acts of violence that tell you most about man's inhumanity to man. For many, many there is no such thing as an innocent Jew.
